The Help

I haven't really allowed myself much time to indulge my reading habits in the last few years because I always feel like I should be reading (read: GRADING) student papers instead.

Well recently, I've been reading my eyeballs out. I get a ton of grief from friends and family for my Linus-with-his-blanky-like attachment to books, but it's my guilty pleasure. I love how good books just take you away, sail you to a different time and place, and show you life from someone else's shoes.

I just started a book that does just that.

All my friends have been twittering about it for months. It's called The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, and has zoomed me to the Civil Rights era, right at the beginning of the 1960s. The story is about the black housekeepers that work for rich white people in Jackson, Mississippi, and how life starts changing for them.

The VOICE in the book is incredible. Stockett writing lets the dialect shine through, so as you read silently you can hear the voices of the characters just like you're hearing them in stereo sound. My favorite character so far is this fiesty loudmouth maid named Minny. She makes me laugh out loud every other paragraph with her rants.

Here, just a few lines for yourself:
I don't know what she does for five minutes on the second floor. I don't like it up there though. Those bedrooms should be stacked full of kids laughing and hollering and pooping up the place. But it's none of my business what Miss Celia does with her day, and ask me, I'm glad she's staying out of my way. I've followed ladies around with a broom in one hand and a trash can in the other trying to keep up with their mess. As long as she stays in that bed, then I've got a job. Even though she has zero kids and nothing to do all day, she is the laziest woman I've ever seen. Including my sister Doreena who never lifted a royal finger growing up because she had the heart defect that we later found out was a fly on the X-ray machine.

Hilarious, right?

Now I know:
Books are my personal form of travel.